Abstract

In this essay I examine a small Dominican convent in the course of the XVIIth century in order to observe the political and social relationships the regulars construct on their territory. My aim is to find out, through observation of the friars' concrete actions, how the convent legitimizes its own prerogatives. The events taken into consideration tell much about jurisdictional conflicts that highlight both the relations between social groups and the web of connections constructed by the fathers of the convent. By focusing on the actions of the fathers of the convent in the XVIIth century we can observe in detail a difficult and complex web of relations between the rules of the order and the daily activity of the convent, which in its turn only marginally depends on the general aims of the order itself. The study, on a local scale, of the concrete activity of the single convents can help to reconstruct the relationship between production of norms and constitutions, and concrete actions, and at the same time it can throw light upon the link between the history of the single convents and the history of the orders.